The new page looks fine in the editor. But the editor is not your website. It often leaves out your header, footer or sidebar, and it certainly does not show what happens on a customer’s phone. Then there is the second problem: your business partner wants to see it before it goes live, and the preview link you emailed just takes them to a login screen.
Both are easy to solve once you know how WordPress handles unpublished content. The sections below explain how to preview a WordPress page before publishing, what draft and pending review actually mean, and how to share a draft with someone who has no login, without accidentally putting it in front of the public.
Where unpublished content lives
A page that has not been published has one of a few statuses, and each behaves differently:
- Draft: saved, visible only to logged-in users who are allowed to edit it. This is where most work happens.
- Pending review: finished as far as the writer is concerned and waiting for someone with publishing rights. Contributors can only submit work this way.
- Scheduled: set to publish automatically at a future date.
- Private: technically published, but visible only to logged-in Administrators and Editors.
None of these is visible to the public or to search engines. That is important for what follows: a preview of a draft only works for someone WordPress recognises as allowed to see it.
How to preview a WordPress page before publishing
- Save your changes first with Save draft. A preview shows the last saved state, so unsaved edits may not appear.
- In the top bar of the editor (our introduction to the block editor labels each part), find the preview control next to Save draft. In recent versions it is a small device icon rather than a button labelled Preview.
- Choose Desktop, Tablet or Mobile to resize the editing area, or choose Preview in new tab to open the page as visitors would see it.
Use the new-tab preview for the real check. It loads your theme’s header, footer and styles around the content, so you see the actual page. The Desktop, Tablet and Mobile options only narrow the editing canvas. They are useful for spotting a column layout that will stack awkwardly, but they are an approximation, not your theme on a real device.
Checking on a real phone
To see the page properly on mobile, log in to WordPress on your phone’s browser, open the draft from the Pages list, and preview it there. This catches things the editor’s Mobile view can miss: a menu that covers the heading, a button too close to the edge, a table that runs off the screen. It takes a minute and is worth doing for any page you plan to advertise.
Previewing changes to a page that is already live
Editing a published page works slightly differently. Your changes go live the moment you click Save (Update in older versions), so there is no Save draft button. You can still preview before updating: make your edits, then use Preview in new tab. WordPress shows the page with your unsaved changes without publishing them. Close the preview, and if you are happy, click Save.
For larger rewrites of a live page, consider working on a copy instead; our post on copying a page in WordPress explains the options, including a plugin feature that merges the copy back into the original.
What to look at in a preview
A quick, consistent check catches most problems before visitors do:
- The page title appears once, not twice (some themes show it and you may have added it as a heading too).
- Images are sharp and not stretched; text over images is readable.
- Every button and link goes where it should. Click them in the preview.
- Phone numbers and email addresses are correct and tappable on mobile.
- Nothing is left from a template or a copied page: placeholder text, an old price, a different town’s name.
- The page has the right template and, if needed, no sidebar.
For the search side of things, the title, slug, meta description and whether the page can be indexed, use our SEO checklist before publishing alongside this.
Drafts and pending review in a small team
If more than one person writes for your site, the Pending status gives you a simple approval step without any extra plugin.
- Give writers the Contributor role. They can write and edit their own draft posts but cannot publish, and cannot create pages at all, so this route suits a blog.
- When a draft is ready, the writer clicks Submit for Review. Its status becomes Pending.
- An Editor or Administrator opens Posts, clicks the Pending filter at the top of the list, reviews the content, and either publishes it or tells the writer what needs changing.
Authors and Editors can also set their own content to Pending to signal it is ready for someone else to check. If you are not sure which role suits each person, our guide to WordPress user roles lays out what each can do, and the beginner’s guide to running WordPress covers adding and removing those accounts.
How to share a draft with someone who cannot log in
The preview link WordPress gives you only works for logged-in users who can edit that content. Send it to a client, a partner or your accountant, and they will see a login form or a “page not found” message. That is WordPress protecting your draft, not a fault.
There are several safe ways around it, each with trade-offs.
A public preview plugin
Plugins such as Public Post Preview create a special link for a single draft that anyone can open without logging in. The link expires after a while, and you can switch it off whenever you like. This is the closest thing to “send a preview link”. Two cautions: anyone the link is forwarded to can see the draft, and you should switch it off once the review is done.
A user account for the reviewer
If someone reviews content regularly, give them their own account with the lowest role that lets them see drafts. A Contributor can see their own drafts but not other people’s, so a reviewer of all content usually needs Editor. Never share your own login. Remove the account when they no longer need it.
A password-protected page
You can publish a page with Visibility set to Password protected, then share the password. This works, but the page is technically published: its title can show in lists and menus that include new pages automatically, and it is easy to forget to switch it back. Use this only for short reviews.
Screenshots or a PDF
For a one-off approval, open the preview in a new tab and take a full-page screenshot or print it to a PDF from your browser. It is not interactive, but it involves no access at all and works for anyone.
If what you need to share is a whole redesign rather than one page, the right tool is a staging site, a private copy of your website where changes can be reviewed together.
Things that go wrong
- The preview shows old content. Save the draft again, then refresh the preview tab. A caching plugin may also be serving an old version; most skip previews, but clearing the cache helps if it persists.
- The preview opens a blank or broken page. This can be a theme or plugin conflict, or a page builder that needs its own preview. Try previewing from the builder’s editor instead.
- A draft appeared on the live site. Check its status. It was probably published by mistake; switch it back to Draft.
Once the page is approved, you can publish straight away or schedule it for a later date.
Frequently asked questions
Can search engines find my draft pages?
No. Drafts, pending and scheduled content are not published, so they do not appear in your sitemap or menus and return nothing to visitors who are not logged in. Search engines can only find them if you make them public, for example by publishing with a password or sharing a public preview link that ends up somewhere public.
Does the preview show exactly what logged-out visitors will see?
Very nearly, but you are still logged in. The admin toolbar appears, caching is usually skipped, and anything a plugin shows only to visitors, such as a cookie banner or a popup, may behave differently. For a final check after publishing, open the live page in a private browser window.
Does previewing a page count as a visit in Google Analytics?
It can, depending on how analytics is set up. Many setups exclude logged-in administrators, but not all do. If your own previews are inflating your figures, check your analytics plugin’s settings for an option to exclude logged-in users or certain roles from tracking.
Why does my preview link not work in another browser?
A preview depends on your login. Open the same link in a different browser, or in a private window, and WordPress no longer knows who you are, so it shows a login screen or a not found page. Log in in that browser first, or use a public preview link if you are testing as a visitor.
A review routine for a small team, with roles set correctly and a staging copy for larger changes, is something our ongoing WordPress support can set up with you, following the way your team already works.
Next in this series: How to Delete a Page in WordPress and Restore It
